A new startup founded by Wall Street veterans aims to transfer American loans in the agriculture, energy, and housing sectors onto public blockchains. The company Birch Hill closed a seed funding round of $4 million, led by Multicoin Capital, to facilitate this transition.
ParaFi Capital, Castle Island Ventures, and Nascent also participated in the seed round. This latest injection of capital increases Birch Hill's total funding to $6.5 million. The startup is led by CEO Bhavin Vaid, who previously worked as an investment banking analyst at Goldman Sachs and co-founded the crypto investment firm Halo Capital. Co-founder and COO Connor Flanagan spent over four years at BlackRock working on the Aladdin platform before moving into the digital asset space.
The raised capital will support a team of eight people. This team includes three key employees from the Yearn vault platform: Brad Schlagel, Ian Plosker, and Alex Cornwell. Additionally, Traver Normandi joined from the risk management firm Gauntlet to lead business development.
Birch Hill operates through three separate divisions. The Vaults division acts as the official curator on the Morpho decentralized lending protocol, managing credit risk assessment parameters. The Strategies unit develops blockchain lending products, such as Birch Hill Absolute Value. Meanwhile, the Enterprise division has applied to FINRA for broker-dealer membership to place private loan offerings directly with accredited investors.
In the long term, the company plans to securitize pools of US multi-family residential, agricultural, and energy loans specifically designed for storage on the blockchain within regulatory frameworks. In August, Birch Hill met with the SEC's Crypto Task Force to promote this structure. The startup asserts that traditional fiduciaries, such as banks and insurance companies, will only allocate capital to loans packaged in recognized structures.